Comments on: Breaking News: The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:02:25 +0000

Delayer humour:

By: Mauri Pelto

Mauri Pelto — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:03:49 +0000

January 2008 almost off the chart, wow almost had to add negative numbers to the y-axis in your chart. I agree with 1999 as the corollary. In November based upon a glacier mass balance forecasting scheme that was published in January I forecast that the La Nina and negative PDO which both lead to cool conditions off the coast of the Western US, that glacier mass balances in the North Cascades of Washington would be positive in 2008. I am sticking with the forecast which is not officially made until April 1, but the La Nina was so well predicted that it was not a hard assumption. If you look at the anomaly maps of temp from NASA GISS you can see that pattern has simply been reinforced from Dec-Feb to the March map.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/ cgi-bin/ gistemp/ do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=1203&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/ cgi-bin/ gistemp/ do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg

By: Ken Brosky

Ken Brosky — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:47:01 +0000

AnalysEs for a pluralized version, not analysIs.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:03:27 +0000

I’m new to all this stuff, but don’t you need two months in a row of warm climate to declare the 2008 ice age over. Just tying to be fair.

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:37:59 +0000

Ronald — you make an interesting climatological point. I was going to put in a modifier like “seems over” — but then I thought, heck, shouldn’t a one-month Ice Age be falsified by one month of data?

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:50:41 +0000

We are definitely entering a new ice age. Every year for the last 5 years two ducks landed on our pond and then stayed through the summer, departing in Autumn. They always arrive on March 12th, plus or minus a day or two.

This year - nothing. Then today (April 13th), exactly one month late, two ducks dutifully arrived. Unfortunately, before they even had a chance to apologise for being late the dog chased them off. (we just got a new dog after the last one died at Christmas and his interpersonal skills are a little under-developed. He is fantastic at football though).

By: Ronald

Ronald — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:54:13 +0000

Joe,
I was just making a smartass remark. I was pretty sure that it was going to be a short cold spell and you are right to point in out. That’s just how weather and climate data is but the trend is clear.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:50:02 +0000

Hoo boy…can’t wait for the April results.
This will show those delayers!
Wait a minute….if I win….I lose…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:27:47 +0000

That’s what is funniest of all. 10 years of cooling means nothing, but 1 month of warming is everything lol. It’s not even a 3-year record. On the other hand the trimester was the coldest since the nineties. And sea ice anomaly is still at +1 million square Kilometres. Yes, it is a POSITIVE anomaly. +1 million. I wonder what Joe will say when it becomes a negative anomaly. Which it will, I am absolutely sure. But that’s not the point. The point is the averages slowly going into more cooling. You have to go back to 1996 to find a longer-lasting positive anomaly of more than 1M km2.

By: Nylo

Nylo — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:28:13 +0000

By: Nylo

Nylo — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:31:39 +0000

(By the way, it is freezing here in Spain this April…)

By: Bud

Bud — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:27:53 +0000

“(By the way, it is freezing here in Spain this April…)”

Ah… the stick-your-head-out-a-window school of climateology.

By: regeya

regeya — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:47:47 +0000

While I tend to lean toward the skeptical view that we still don’t know enough about what’s going on to accurately predict what’s going to happen (wasn’t the earth supposed to be covered in glaciers by now, according to 1970s’ science?) I’m rooting for renewable energy, am willing to push for an end to non-renewable resource exploitation, and more sane practices all around. I for one want my daughter and her children to live in a better world, and want her to live to see her 30th birthday!

Hey, there are still strong Global Cooling advocates, and they can make some fairly convincing arguments as well. My own take is that we don’t know what the hell is going on but that our best bet is to have as little impact as 6+ billion people can, lest we screw something up ourselves. Let nature screw things up for us! Heh.

By: Nylo

Nylo — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:39:25 +0000

Fully agreed, regeya. I support any help for the development of new clean energy systems. The sooner the better (after all, oil won’t be there forever for us to burn it). But I am against blaming the consumer and against creating such things as CO2 markets to pay for what is free and is not a pollutant, with also null efects regarding total emissions because the biggest emitters like China or India will never sign any treaty and risk their chances of quick economic development. All they will get is fabrics moving to China. All those which can, at least.

I am not putting a technology leap in my plans, and I don’t need it because I don’t think we are in an inminent risk of any catastrophic cataclysm. I am, however, well aware that the more funds we dedicate to investigation on new technologies, the more probable it is that the technology leap will happen and the sooner that will take place. May it be in 1 month, 5 years or 30.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:26:02 +0000

Nylo — The farmers will disagree with you. The entire Mediterrean basin is drying up, making the practice of agriculture difficult. If global warming is allowed to continue, the American mid-west will eventually become like Australia, unable to grow (much) wheat.

Have you noticed in the news that the world is running out of food? The situatiion will become (slowly) worse.

By: Nylo

Nylo — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:44:48 +0000

The world does not have food problems but feeding problems because of the fantastic idea of the biofuels, which uses the food for something different from feeding. Don’t YOU read the news? The mediterranean may be drying up, yes, but food productivity has not ever stopped increasing. And there is no proof that the drying is a result of the global warming, no matter what the alarmists want to claim, they have no proof. I would rather blame the increasing population, which increases the water consumption from the reservoirs, and because of that they are running out of it.

In Spain there’s an interesting grant from the UE of 45€ for every Ha that you cultivate for biofuels, and also, because a 10% of every fuel will have to be biofuel in a short time, farmers are increasing the price of their products because they know that petrol companies are going to be forced to buy them anyway. And they will sell them to the petrol companies unless the people who want the products for eating are willing to pay as much. THAT is what increases the price of the products. Not shortage. There are lots of corn out there, if you want to pay for it.

It’s fantastic when idealists with no idea of the real issues make it to the government and mess up with the free market.

By: Darryl

Darryl — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:26:18 +0000

Actually, the pattern of hotter summers and cooler winters should become more apparent as the eliptical orbit of the earth becomes elongated on its 100,000 year cycle. Eventually the amount of time spent in the farthest distances from the sun (ie winters) will become longer than the amount of time in the summer. This pattern at first will produce an effect where it seems that summers are way to hot, but soon the length of the winter will be so long that even the brief warm up in the summer won’t be enough to overcome the ice build up. Thus an ige age.

Look at today, in the beginning of August there is a cold front that will reach all the way to the gulf of mexico. This has been happening for most of the summer. Winter weather patterns are setting up in mid summer. So even though its hotter than normal, the earth is changing into a winter pattern earlier and earlier each year, eventually the summer pattern will dissapear and you will have cold air from the north reaching all the way to the gulf all year round. The question is, how much time before we reach that. Good luck getting a straight answer from Noaa.

By: mark

mark — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:03:25 +0000

@ Darryl -

I’ve never heard this theory. Could you please provide a source?

By: rpauli

rpauli — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:28:35 +0000

Nice Poetic hyperbole:

“At this rate I’m afraid, we have only a couple of decades before the Earth becomes another Venus.”

I wish there was more than this, the rate of inevitable change is a hugely important topic.

Anyone know of a site that may offer model and scenarios updates?

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:17:19 +0000

I don’t understand Darryl’s reference to a “100,000 year cycle” of the sun. One rotation around the earth’s axis = one solar day. One revolution of the earth around the sun, which completes the earths entire orbit around the sun, = one solar year.

Although the earth’s orbit around the sun is slightly eliptical, it is also close to being a perfect circle. The earth at its fartherest point away from the sun takes place on July 4th. (Interesting coicidence, isn’t it?) That point is called “aphelion.”

The point at which the earth is closest to the sun takes place on January 3rd. That point is called “perihelion.”

You can check this website for a simple explanation of the above.

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6h.html

The only other “cycle” in relation to the earth and the sun that I know of is the precessional, in which the point of the earth’s axis traces a circle against the fixed stars in the background. (Along with eventually changing the North star, and moving the location of the equinoxes slightly every year.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession_(astronomy)

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:21:18 +0000

P.S. The difference in the earth’s distance from the sun when it is fartherest away and at its closest, BTW, is aprx. 4.4 million km.

Which raises another observation: in an elliptical orbit, there are two points at the end of the ellipse, as cited above, not just one.

No flames intended. All I am saying is that this is all I know about a cycle in reference to the earth’s orbit. I don’t know anything about a 100,000 year orbit and I would like to find out more about it.